


The Best Defense

by Scrawlers



Series: The Space Between Our Hands [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, wishshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuugi and Jounouchi are adults, and it is because they are adults that they have decided to turn their apartment into the best blanket fort this side of Domino City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Defense

**Author's Note:**

> This one takes place when they're about 18/19, pretty much right after they've moved into their apartment together.

It had taken work to collect as many blankets as they had, and really, Yuugi was surprised they needed so many. When they had first decided on their apartment, it had seemed big enough, but the size seemed to shrink after they finished moving their furniture and other belongings in, even allowing for both of their bedrooms. Once they had decided to turn the apartment into a massive blanket fort for an entire weekend, though, the size once again seemed formidable. In the end, it took not only all of the sheets and blankets from both of their beds, but also spare blankets and comforters that they smuggled out of Yuugi's grandpa's house. They would return them once the weekend was over, so it was fine to take them, as far as Yuugi was concerned. Besides, Yuugi figured that his grandpa discreetly distracting his mother was implicit allowance. His grandpa couldn't have known what the blankets were for, but he was helping Yuugi and Jounouchi sneak them out anyway. That was as good as an all-clear.

All the same, as Yuugi pinned up the last of the kitchen blankets by jamming the corner of the blanket into one of the upper cabinet doors, he couldn't help but be struck by the sudden realization of how silly they must have looked, clambering over furniture to pin blankets as close to the ceiling as they could make them. He laughed.

"What's up, Yuugi?" Jounouchi called. He was pinning blankets up across the room, over the by the living room window. Yuugi walked along the counter to fix the other end of his blanket to the corner of the wall by the fridge.

"I was just thinking that . . . it's kind of goofy we're doing this, right?" He looked over to see Jounouchi looking at him with a raised eyebrow, and so he clarified, "Making a blanket fort, I mean. Kids make blanket forts. We moved out on our own . . . we're supposed to be adults."

"Exactly. We're adults. That's why we're making a blanket fort," Jounouchi said. He hopped down from the armrest of the chair where he'd been perched, and when he saw the questioning look Yuugi gave him, he explained, "See, when you're a kid living with your parents, you have to do what they say, usually. If you want to turn the house into a blanket fort, you can't because they'll say no. But when you're an adult and you have your own place, you can do whatever you want with it, which includes turning it into the most awesome blanket fort this side of Domino City if you want." He flashed Yuugi a lopsided grin. "So you see, it's _because_ we're adults that we're making a blanket fort. Nothing kid-like about it."

Yuugi couldn't help but laugh again as he beamed. "You're right," he said, even as he knew that some others would argue that just because they _could_ do it didn't mean it was less childish. Who cared what those others thought, anyway? "Exactly right."

"Yeah, I know," Jounouchi said, and Yuugi shook his head as he tried to choke back another bout of laughter and pinned the side of his blanket up over the fridge.

It didn't take too much longer for them to finish pinning the rest of the blankets up around their apartment, and when they were done, they crawled beneath the canopy to make their way over to the television. There, they had amassed not only a comfortable nest of pillows and extra blankets (how they had extras Yuugi had no idea, but he figured the fact that his grandpa couldn't go to the store without buying more of them due to how cold winters could get had something to do with it), but a wide variety of snacks, video games, movies, and—most importantly—four cardboard spinners. Once they were both situated in their comfortable nest, Yuugi laid all four spinners he'd created out between them.

"Okay," he said, "so the rules to this game are pretty simple. First, one of us will spin the activity spinner, and we'll decide which one of us that is via coin toss." He tapped his finger against the activity spinner, which had three equally sized spaces: one for movies, one for video games, and one for traditional (which Yuugi had scrawled "board/card" next to in parenthesis) games. "Once the spinner decides which thing we'll do, the one who didn't spin it will pick a genre or game from the matching spinner. So for instance, if I spun this one and it hit video games—"

"—then I'd spin the video game spinner to figure out which type of game we'll play," Jounouchi said, and there was a note of exasperation in his voice. Yuugi smiled a bit sheepishly. "Yeah, I got it. It's simple enough."

"Yeah," Yuugi said. "Once you figure out the genre, then I'd pick a game from that genre. We'll keep alternating like that to keep things fair and interesting."

"Sounds good to me. Keeps us from wasting too much time trying to figure out what to do, anyway," Jounouchi said. "So, you got a coin?"

"Yup!" Yuugi swiped the yen coin he had placed on the coffee table for just that purpose, and when he looked back he saw that Jounouchi was grinning.

"Trust you to always be prepared when it comes to a game," he said. Yuugi felt a thrill of pride. "All right, let's do this! I call heads."

"Then I'll take tails!" Yuugi flipped the coin in the air, and both of them watched it spin up before it tumbled back down, landing neatly on the carpet between them. As one they leaned over to see it, and Jounouchi groaned when he saw that it had come up tails.

"I _always_ lose coin tosses," he said.

"Not always. Your luck with Time Wizard tends to be pretty good," Yuugi said fairly, as he set the coin back on the coffee table before he spun the activity spinner.

"Yeah, that's true," Jounouchi said, and this time, he was the one that sounded like he felt a bit good about himself.

The activity spinner landed solidly on _movie,_ and so Yuugi grabbed the movie spinner and passed it over to Jounouchi. While the traditional game spinner had specific games, such as Duel Monsters or Monster Fighter, marked on it, the movie and video game spinners were blocked off by genre. (Yuugi had considered making two spinners for video games—one for console, and then one for genre _after_ the console spinner was spun—but he figured that would just make the process too drawn out.) Jounouchi flicked the movie spinner without preamble, using a bit more force than was strictly necessary as if he thought it would help him land on something good, only for his face to crumple in despair when the spinner landed solidly on _horror_.

"Aw, come on! You've gotta be kidding me!" he groaned.

"Hard luck, Jounouchi-kun," Yuugi said, as Jounouchi flopped backward to land on one of their pillow piles. Yuugi was well aware of Jounouchi's fear of all things horror. It bordered on a phobia at times, and truthfully, Yuugi had always felt a bit perplexed by it. Jounouchi had no problem facing things in real life that were legitimately dangerous; he hadn't backed down even a little when he was handcuffed to a serial killer, he would readily engage any enemy in a fistfight no matter their size, he had fought in Shadow Games that had very nearly succeeded in killing him, and through it all, he didn't cower even once. But when he was faced with the imagery of ghosts or demons in the form of holograms or movies—things that weren't real and therefore could not actually hurt him—his defiant, reckless courage wavered. It was the strangest thing, but Yuugi didn't mind it. It was just part of what made Jounouchi . . . well, Jounouchi.

In any case, although he had added horror to the spinner in the interest of fairness, Yuugi had admittedly not expected it to come up so soon. It wasn't really how he'd wanted to kickstart their blanket fort weekend. He hesitated a moment, chewing his lip, before he said, "Do you . . . want to spin again?"

"No," Jounouchi said, and he heaved a sigh. "The spinner said horror, so we're gonna do horror. I'll just have to face it like a man." He pushed himself up again, and nodded toward the stack of DVDs. "Go ahead and pick one out, Yuugi. Gimme your best shot."

"Well . . . okay. If you're sure." Yuugi crawled over to the DVD pile, and pulled the horror stack closer to him. After a moment of flipping through the cases, he chose an indie psychological horror film from the pile, figuring that at least a film like that probably wouldn't have demons oozing from the walls. That, he figured, would make it easier for Jounouchi to handle. "How about this one? Bakura-kun recommended it."

"Oh, great. Bakura recommended it. I'm sure that won't make it the creepiest movie in the world at all," Jounouchi said.

Yuugi held the movie over the stack. "If you want to try again—"

"No, no." Jounouchi waved his concerns off. "It's the rules of the game, right? You spin for what we do, I spin for the genre, you pick the thing from the genre I landed us on. Come on, I can play the game. No big deal. No more complaints from me."

"Well, okay. If you're really sure . . ." Yuugi said, and as Jounouchi nodded, Yuugi scooted over to the DVD player. Yuugi slid the DVD in and used the player's remote to quickly bypass the menus and previews, and once the movie started up, he crawled back over to sit in the central pillow nest with Jounouchi.

The movie started out easily enough. Jounouchi and Yuugi both relaxed against the pillows they'd propped up along the side of the coffee table (though Jounouchi was a bit tense, Yuugi could tell), and Yuugi leaned over a bit so that his shoulder was against Jounouchi's as a show of silent moral support. Like most horror movies, this movie didn't really require that at the start. Instead, it opened with what seemed like perfectly normal, if a bit unpleasant in personality, people going about their daily lives. Nothing was wrong with the old house they had just so happened to purchase despite it being out in the middle of nowhere, they were sure. Everything was fine.

True to form, things did not stay fine, and from the moment the child character began noticing another child—an eerie, unearthly child with hair that looked a little too wet and eyes that looked a little too dark—watching them from the garden, it was clear that Jounouchi was no longer okay with the direction the movie was taking. His fingers squeezed the edges of the pillows they were seated on, and when the first jump scare of the movie came in the form of the unearthly child leaning over the child character's bed so that they were the first thing the child character saw upon waking, Jounouchi abruptly grabbed Yuugi's wrist and squeezed it tightly, his eyes wide and his jaw rigid as he stared at the screen, his breathing quick and shallow enough to tell Yuugi that his heart must have been racing.

"Sorry," Jounouchi said after a moment, and he released Yuugi's wrist. Yuugi massaged it. "I just . . ."

"It's okay," Yuugi said, and when Jounouchi didn't answer—something which told Yuugi that Jounouchi didn't think it was okay, but wasn't going to disagree outright—Yuugi scooted closer so that he was sitting flush against Jounouchi's side. Moving as if on instinct, Jounouchi put his arm around Yuugi's shoulders, though he gave Yuugi a puzzled look as he did so. Yuugi grinned. "It's kind of freaking me out a little, too," he explained. "If we sit together like this, we can keep each other safe."

Jounouchi gave Yuugi a smile that said he didn't really buy that Yuugi was also scared, but it was clear enough that he wasn't going to question it, either. "You got it," he said. "We'll get through this thing together."

"Definitely," Yuugi agreed.

It was a good enough plan, but the movie was close to three hours long due to how long it spent in the build-up stage, and after the second or third jump scare and the first series of scenes dealing with a haunting that may or may not have included actual ghosts (it was unclear, and now that he thought on it, Yuugi thought he remembered Bakura saying that it was supposed to be just as psychologically horrifying for the audience as it was for the characters), Jounouchi ended up accidentally pulling Yuugi close with enough strength to tug Yuugi into his lap. He apologized, but Yuugi—figuring that it might be easier this way, especially if this _was_ supposed to be a mind game for them as well—positioned himself so that he was seated between Jounouchi's legs instead, and leaned back against Jounouchi's chest. Jounouchi seemed doubtful of this new seating arrangement for only a second; in the next, one of the characters discovered that her family portrait had Xs drawn over each person's face in what looked like blood, and as the music delved into a melody comprised of haunting piano and scare chords, Jounouchi wrapped both of his arms around Yuugi's shoulders and held him tightly.

They spent the rest of the movie like that. Jounouchi held Yuugi back against him, and for his part, Yuugi enjoyed it. The movie was definitely terrifying—Bakura could pick them, and on reflection Yuugi should have known that he shouldn't have considered a _Bakura_ movie when trying to find one Jounouchi would be comfortable with—but Jounouchi's arms were warm and strong, and that made the movie seem considerably less frightening. There were a few times when Jounouchi squeezed him a little too tightly (though he always let up when Yuugi said so), and more than once, Jounouchi buried his face in Yuugi's hair to avoid looking at the screen (once, near the end of the movie, this was accompanied by an unhappy whine mixed with a stream of muffled obscenities, and Yuugi had to fight back a smile). But other than that, with his arms around Yuugi and his chin resting on top of Yuugi's head, Jounouchi didn't lodge a single complaint about the movie the rest of the way through.

When it was over, and the movie returned to the DVD menu, Jounouchi once again had his face buried in Yuugi's hair, his arms still wrapped comfortably around Yuugi's shoulders. Yuugi was relaxed back against Jounouchi's chest, but after a moment he asked, "Jounouchi-kun, are you okay?"

"Mm, yeah. Sorry, Yuugi," Jounouchi said. He pulled back, but Yuugi shook his head and turned around to face him.

"No, don't worry about it. That was just . . . a lot more horrifying than I thought it would be when I picked it." He laughed a bit sheepishly. "Maybe next time I won't listen to Bakura-kun when it comes to movie recommendations."

Jounouchi gave a flat look. "You think?" he said, his tone just as dry, but then he smiled a little. "But nah, it was fine. Made it through like I said I would, right? And besides, we did it together, so it's no big deal. Not for us, anyway."

"Right," Yuugi said, and he grinned himself as he used the remote to turn the DVD player off and then reached for the activity spinner. "Okay, Jounouchi-kun, you're up again. It's your turn to decide what we do next."

This time Jounouchi's grin was a little bigger, and he cracked his knuckles before he reached for the spinner. "All right," he said. "Let's do this."

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Cuddling in a blanket fort.


End file.
